CAA Signs Kimberlé Crenshaw, Cofounder And Executive Director Of The African American Policy Forum

Bruce Haring
·2 min read

EXCLUSIVE: CAA has signed Kimberlé Crenshaw, the cofounder and executive director of the African American Policy Forum, a gender and racial justice legal think tank.

Crenshaw is a leading authority on civil rights, Black feminist legal theory, and race, racism and the law.

More from Deadline

She is also the founder and executive director of the Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies at Columbia Law School; the Promise Institute Professor at UCLA Law School; and the Isidor and Seville Sulzbacher at Columbia Law School.

Crenshaw is popularly known for her development of “intersectionality,” “Critical Race Theory,” and the #SayHerName campaign, and was recently named the most-cited woman legal scholar in law.

She hosts the podcast Intersectionality Matters!, and since March has moderated the webinar series Under The Blacklight: The Intersectional Vulnerabilities that the Twin Pandemics Lay Bare, which has convened almost 20 times to discuss the intersection of pre-existing inequalities, opportunistic disease, and police violence.

In addition, based on interviews with the mothers of Black women slain by police, she has coauthored a play, Say Her Name: The Lives That Should Have Been. The plot entangles the stories of six women, victims of police violence, and their mothers in a tapestry of intergenerational loss, grief, resistance, and rebirth.

In 2019, Crenshaw was named one of the ten most important thinkers in the world by Prospect Magazine, and she writes a column for The New Republic. She is a frequent contributor on MSNBC and NPR, and is considered a leading voice in calling for a gender-inclusive approach to racial justice interventions.

Alongside the #SayHerName campaign, Crenshaw has spearheaded the “Why We Can’t Wait” campaign and co-authored Black Girls Matter: Pushed Out, Overpoliced and Underprotected, and Say Her Name: Resisting Police Brutality Against Black Women.

Crenshaw’s groundbreaking work on “Intersectionality” has traveled globally and was influential in shaping the South African equality clause. She has held visiting professorships at the London School of Economics and the European Institute, and was the Fulbright Chair in South America. She has given talks on race and gender justice around the world.

She received her J.D. from Harvard, L.L.M. from University of Wisconsin, and B.A. from Cornell University. She sits on the Boards of VDay and the Algorithmic Justice League.

Best of Deadline

Sign up for Deadline's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.